Mikhail Tukhachevsky biography

Biography of the First World War and German captivity on July 12, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, graduated from the Alexander Military School for the first in performance and discipline. He was produced in the second seconds and, according to the rules, provided a free choice of place of service. Tukhachevsky, as was bequeathed by Grandfather General, preferred the Life Guards Semenovsky regiment.

According to Uncle Tukhachevsky, Colonel Balkashin, his nephew was about to continue his military education: "He was very capable and ambitious, intended to make a military career, dreamed of entering the Academy of the General Staff." And there, you look, - a straight road to the generals, if, what the devil does not joke, not to the feldmarshals.

In the meantime, a freshly baked second second, having received rubles of state money for equipment - for the Tukhachevsky amount a considerable amount, went to the enemy on vacation. But the vacation had to be interrupted before the deadline: mobilization and war were declared. Tukhachevsky was forced to hastily catch up with his regiment, who performed in the Warsaw area.

The young second lieutenant was appointed as a junior officer in a nesting-deputy commander of the 7th company of the 2nd battalion. The company was commanded by an experienced warrior Captain Verelago, who volunteered in the Russian-Japanese war as a volunteer. Soon the regiment was transferred to the area of ​​Ivangorod and Lublin against the Austro-Hungarian troops.

The company commander for this feat received the Order of St. George of the 4th degree, the junior officer-the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree with swords. Then other battles followed with the Austrians and the German units who came to their aid. His comrade A. Typolt, who commanded a platoon in the 6th company of the same 2nd battalion, recalled the case that occurred at the end of September or early October: “The regiment held positions near Krakow, along the right bank of the Vistula.

The Germans strengthened on the dominant left bank. In front of our battalion in the middle of the Vistula was a small sandy island. The officers often said that, they say, it would not be bad to get to the island and from there to look out how enemy defenses were built, how much effort was not bad, but how to do it? Misha Tukhachevsky silently listened to such conversations and thought stubbornly about something.

And then one day he got a little fishing boat, the sides of which barely towered above the water, lay down in it in the evening, pushed away from the shore and swam quietly. In complete solitude, he spent on the island all night, part of the morning and safely returned to our shore, delivering the very information that they so dreamed of in the regiment. ” In the fall of the year, Tukhachevsky, for a couple of days, escaped to the family in Moscow in connection with the sudden death of his father.

The sisters did not have time to inform Mikhail about this misfortune. He himself felt that something had happened at home, and knocked out a short-term vacation from his superiors. In addition to Nikolai Nikolayevich, even before the start of the war, the daughter of Nadia, a talented artist, graduate of the Stroganov school, died, the son Igor died. Two other sons, Nikolai and Alexander, were drafted into the army with warrant officers in one with Mikhail the Semenovsky regiment.

But they did not find a brother there. Tukhachevsky fought bravely and skillfully. He did not bypass his awards. Few of the officers [37] could boast of so many differences by 22 years! Here he was met for the last time V. Nurserokin, who recalled that Tukhachevsky “spoke especially enthusiastically about his hostilities, that he was already known in a whole division.

A light of hidden annoyance shone in his eyes-his cherished dream of obtaining the Order of St. George of the 4th degree did not come true. ” The addiction of a witness, seeking to introduce us to Tukhachevsky only as an unprincipled careerist, is immediately striking here. It is interesting how Subsnoykin managed to see annoyed in the eyes of the wounded second lieutenant if she was “hidden” and, as it appears from the text of the memoirs, Tukhachevsky about his displeasure about receiving instead of George Vladimir in a conversation with a memoir, he didn’t say a word?

In addition, there is no data that the junior officer did not get along with the commander of the company, envied him, otherwise he hardly managed to get so many awards in six months. The St. George Cross was useful to the poor captain of Verelago only once, and then after death in the last for him and the Tukhachevsky battle of the First World War. Heavy battles unfolded in the area of ​​the Polish city of Lomzh.

General P. Krasnov later recalled about them, who became the Don ataman in the civilian: “There were terrible battles under the lumber. The guards infantry burned in them, as a straw burns, with armfuls thrown into a bonfire. ” In those battles, it was destined to burn without a trace and the Tukhachevsky company. In the afternoon, the Germans attacked the trenches of the Semenovites after a powerful artillery preparation, but could not capture them.

Then at night they undertook [38] a sudden attack, broke through at the junction of two companies and surrounded the 7th company. In hand -to -hand combat, it was almost completely destroyed. The surviving soldiers and officers were captured. The Germans raised the bayonets jumping out of the dugout of the captain. Subsequently, more than twenty bayonet wounds were counted on his body.

It was possible to identify the disfigured corpse of the company only on the St. George Cross-the reward was served by the service.Tukhachevsky was more fortunate. At the time of the attack, he slept in a shallow trench. Waking up, he tried to organize the resistance of his company, fired from the attackers from the revolver, but was quickly knocked down, stunned and found in captivity.

By order of the regiment of February 27, Tukhachevsky, along with Veslago, were declared dead. Only a few months later, the family received a letter from Germany from Michael through the Red Cross. Mother and sisters were incredibly delighted with his "resurrection." Tukhachevsky’s letters wrote peppy so as not to worry his relatives: “Alive and well, everything is safe.” And in the same postcard with humor, he reported: “Today we were given honey, which is similar to Vax with taste and color.” Due to the sea blockade by the Entente, the population of Germany was a half-starvated existence.

Prisoners, even officers, were fed quite scarce, often substitutes for natural products, like an ersatz-coffee. Obviously, Mikhail had a chance to try Ersatz-Med-another fruit of German ingenuity in the era of “brilliantly organized hunger”, as the Germans themselves called the system of rigid rationing of food. In letters to the sisters, Tukhachevsky advised to re -read the “Word about Igor’s Regiment”, hinting that, like the hero of an ancient poem, he was preparing to escape from captivity.

But by no means hunger pushed Mikhail Nikolayevich, like many other captured officers, to escape. He wanted to continue to fight, believed in the victory over Germany and its allies, was eager to show [39] his military skill, to find his Tuno on the battlefields. Lydia Nord many years later Tukhachevsky admitted: “I was very happy to dream of a war of great exploits, but was captured.

But even before the captivity, I already received the order of Vladimir with swords. In my soul, I was very proud of this, but carefully hid my feeling from others. And I was sure that I would deserve the St. George Cross. ” This revelation, by the way, is much more like the truth than the allegations of Nursing, as if Vladimir with swords Tukhachevsky perceived as an insult, as he was counting on George.

Five times Tukhachevsky tried to escape from the captivity. Four attempts ended in failure. So, during the third escape from the officer camp in Bad-Stuer, Tukhachevsky, along with the ensign Filippov, got out of the barbed wire in boxes with dirty linen. For twenty -six days the fugitives reached the Dutch border, eating only by the fact that at night it was possible to pull off in peasant gardens.

Filippov was lucky to go to Holland, and the German border guards seized Tukhachevsky at the very goal. In the end, he was sent to the famous international camp in the 9th Fort of the old Bavarian fortress of Ingolstadt, where the most incorrigible fugitives were brought from all over Germany. There were not only Russians, but also the French, the British, the Italians, the Belgians from the casemates of the fort was very difficult to escape, but Tukhachevsky did not leave the idea to escape from captivity at all costs.

And he helped others to run. The French officer Goyce de Maizarak, who later rose to the general, recalled how Tukhachevsky agreed to be called instead of him at the evening verification to cover the escape and give a fugitive, who was chosen beyond the fortress in a box from under the biscuit, the opportunity to win the first, most expensive clock at the chase. I hated the Germans how he hates trainers a beast caught in a cage.

The reasoning of my captivity in captivity, foreign officers, the reasons for the failures of the Russian-Japanese campaign and our defeats in this war were fury. The charter to think about the plan of the escape, I rested that I mentally reorganized our army, created another, which was supposed to be put on the knees of Germany. And let the power of Russia feel the whole world.

I made plans for military operations and waged the army into battle, then I was on the verge of insanity in Ingolstadt Tukhachevsky had many interesting interlocutors. Here he met the French captain Charles de Gaulle, the future general and president of France, the founder of the Fifth Republic, who repeated the path of Bonaparte in some ways. De Gaulle, like Tukhachevsky, tried five times to flee the captivity, but everything is unsuccessful.

In M they again had to meet, already on different sides of the barricades, on the Vistula, where Tukhachevsky commanded the Western Front advancing on Warsaw, and de Gaulle, an officer of the French military mission in Poland, headed the Polish infantry detachment, supported by several tanks. Subsequently, de Gaulle warmly recalled the young pretty threesome second lieutenant, who struck him with energy and impudence both in the 9th Fort of Ingolstadt and on the battlefield near Warsaw.

Another Frenchman, Remi Ruura, under the pseudonym Pierre [41] Fervak, published the first book about Tukhachevsky in the year, adhered to anarchist views when he was in Ingolyitadt. He talked a lot with the Russian second lieutenant, to whom he felt sympathy. Fervak ​​and Tukhachevsky often argued. Forced idleness captivated to find a way out in an intellectual game, in endless disputes about the ongoing war and disputes on world topics.The French officer testified later: “They argued about Christianity and God, art and literature, about Beethoven, about Russia and the“ Russian soul ”, about the Russian intelligentsia.